North Korea: Too much, too soon

Sensing, perhaps, that his foreign policy "legacy" does not lie
with the Israelis and the Palestinians, President Clinton is
looking farther east-specifically, to North Korea, the land of
missiles and mass starvation. He plans to go there later this year
to follow up on the "historic talks" started by Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright.

This would be a mistake. North Korea is the last place a U.S.
president should visit at this time.

For one thing, Kim Jong-il, the current leader of North Korea,
has done nothing to repudiate the terrorist policies of his father,
Kim Il-sung, who started the Korean War in 1950-a conflict that
claimed the lives of 33,000 American soldiers.

Under Kim Il-sung, for example, North Korea bombed and murdered
part of the South Korean cabinet in Burma and provided safe haven
to terrorists from the Japanese Red Army who blew up an airliner in
1987. Over a period of decades, it also kidnapped women from Japan
and citizens from South Korea.

Kim Il-sung died in 1994, but these policies didn't stop when
Kim Jong-il took over the country. Consider:

Even after Japan began providing food, fuel and financial aid
to North Korea, the kidnapping continued. In 1997, for example,
Tokyo accused agents of the North of kidnapping a middle-school
girl missing from Niigata, Japan.

In September 1996, North Korea tried to sneak armed agents into
South Korea via submarine. When the submarine hit a reef and sank,
several North Korean commandoes committed suicide, while others
killed several South Korean soldiers and fought to the death to
avoid capture.

When Hwang Jang-yap, the number-three man in the North Korean
government, defected and sought asylum in the South Korean Embassy
in Beijing, Kim Jong-il dispatched security personnel from his
Beijing embassy to kill or kidnap him. The Chinese government
foiled the attempt.

North Korean leaders are still providing refuge to the Japanese
Red Army bombers and have yet to return them to Tokyo for
trial.

More importantly, though, from an American standpoint, North
Korea is an enduring military threat. Its long-range missile
program is one of the driving forces behind the initiative to build
a U.S. missile defense system. Its army continues to deploy some
4,000 tanks, 2,000 armored personnel carriers, 13,000 artillery
pieces, and no fewer than 1.16 million troops against democratic
South Korea. These formidable forces face about half that number of
South Korean soldiers and weapons, backed by 37,000 American troops
stationed in the South.

Despite years of famine and economic hardship, in which as many
as 1 million North Korean citizens have perished from starvation,
the Korean People's Army continues to be well-fed and to run robust
military exercises. Although North Korea has told foreigners that
it might accept a U.S. presence on the peninsula after some form of
unification with the South, its internal publications show that its
major goal in improving relations with South Korea is gaining the
withdrawal of U.S. troops.

The administration should also think hard about the timing of
the president's visit. The Middle East peace process has fallen
apart, and 17 American sailors lay dead because of an act of
terrorism in Yemen. The November visit administration officials are
contemplating-coming only one month after the memorial service for
the Americans killed in Yemen-is too soon for President Clinton to
depart on a visit to North Korea.

The president and the Secretary of State should remember that
exactly 50 years ago, in November 1950, the 1st Marine Division and
other United Nations forces were fighting for their lives around
the Chosin (Changjin) Reservoir in North Korea, being badly mauled
by attacking Chinese and North Korean forces. Today, even though an
armistice is in place, the Korean War is not over, and North
Korea's forces remain deployed on a war footing against United
Nations, South Korean, and United States forces across the 38th
parallel.

The memory of the Americans slain in Korea and the memory of the
Americans just killed in Yemen demands that President Clinton use
memorial services in the United States or South Korea to honor
allied and American dead and affirm the U.S. security commitment to
the region-not rush to create some new "legacy" with a dictator
that could blow up as quickly as the Middle East peace process or
the USS Cole.